We all do a thousand small things each day. Some of these small things change our lives forever. Some of these small things help us to reach our goal. Some of these small things make us smile, sad, think, thank, fear, and courageous.

Congo

07/22/2012

I started my second week in Kinshasa with the door almost closed on this chapter. I arranged to have our container load of stuff shipped to Kananga by Gomair, a local air freight company. Also, I arranged to fly with the cargo on their Saturday flight.

Friday, they came and picked up everything. However, they were delayed by two hours after the driver wedged the truck between to opposite walls. Here is Sunday afternoon in Kinshasa and I'm still here. Neither the cargo or I have left due to a pilot being sick.

Maybe, just maybe, we can fly out on Monday.

Here's another thought. With skyrocket unemployment in Congo and with no other means to travel from within Congo, there should be pilots enough to fill in. BUT, that's not the case. Airline pilots are skilled jobs. There's a lack of highly skilled and technically trained workers in Congo.

04/09/2012

Here's a BIG CHANGE OF MIND for me! I might like to stay overnight in Kinshasa (DR Congo) to visit the symphony.

I thought that was never going to be a reason for me to stay in Kinshasa for pleasure. Typically, I fly into Kinshasa from Brussels arriving at about 7 pm. It is too late to leave for my next destination. Or occasionally, I have to shop for items to take with me into the country's interior. Always, it is not a place for me to linger for pleasure.

After seeing this CBS News 60 Minutes segment, I might, just might, like to stay overnight or an extra day to see the Kinshasa Symphony.

"Joy in the Congo" seems an unlikely -- even impossible -- title for a story from the Congo, considering the searing poverty and brutal civil war that have decimated that country. Yet in Kinshasa, the capital city, we found an unforgettable symphony orchestra -- 200 singers and instrumentalists defying the poverty, hardship, and struggles of life in the world's poorest country...and creating some of the most moving music we have ever heard. Follow Bob Simon to the Congo to hear the sounds and stories of the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra.

08/24/2011

This summer I had the opportunity to tell my story and the dream of the Congo Water Project at a number of Presbyterian Churches in central Indiana. The following is an excerpt of a sermon given on August 7th at Grace Presbyterian Church, Fort Wayne. You can download the entire sermon with pictures (Download God Given Dreams).

The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan. They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Genesis 37:17-19.

During one of my early trips to the Congo, I was discussing my mission with a Congolese man. Today, this man is unknown to me, I can’t remember his face, and I can’t even remember the village or city where I was. But this unknown man said that I was like Joseph. It was not colorful shirts. It was not my charming looks. It was my dream to help the Congolese people.

This morning for a few minutes I would like to share some of my dreams of Congo with you. I dream of access to safe drinking water to poor rural Congolese. Officially, you will read that less than 50 percent of the Congolese have access to safe drinking water. But in reality, seven out of ten rural Congolese have access to safe drinking water. We will just say that 50 percent do not have access to safe drinking water. No matter which you slice it, millions of Congolese do not have access to safe drinking water. They are the “Other Half”.

Let’s define access to safe drinking water. Get up right now, pour yourself a glass of water and drink it. If you return to your chair in less than 30 minutes, walked less than a kilometer in safety and did not become ill, your water meets most of the definition for safe drinking water, as published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, in 2006.

Congo Helping Hands dreams to purify unsafe drinking water with bio-sand filters and with LifeStraw Family filters. We dream to bring water nearer to the poor by drilling water wells and building water cisterns. We dream to bring basic sanitation systems to the rural poor, too.

I so believe God have sent me to the Congo to help his people, the poor Congolese women and girls who walk miles to get water for their families. I believe God have sent me to the Congo to help his people, the poor baby girls and boys who drink dirty water and get sick. Our God wants us to bring safe and near water to the ‘Other Half’.

Please pray for me and others as we implement these water and sanitation projects. Pray that God opens our heart, eyes, and ears to the needs of millions of poor Congolese. Amen.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is criticizing the loss of its status as a favored U.S. trading partner. An order from President Barack Obama Tuesday stripped the DRC of its status as a beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

The designation gave Congo specific trade advantages to encourage economic development and reforms. U.S. officials say the move stemmed from large-scale human rights abuses by the Congolese armed forces, especially rapes.

12/22/2010

Here's a dangerous combination. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a third world, lawless, poor, African countries. Eastern Congo is a wild, lawless place where rebels groups from neighboring countries roam around to rape, pillage, and loot. A Congo mine produced uranium, and other nuclear and radioactive materials.

As a result, the US signed a nuclear proliferation deal with the Congo. We must remember Congo is not your typical poor African country.

The United States and Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday signed an agreement to prevent trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials, the US embassy said. The deal comes after a November UN report revealed that a group of Rwandan rebels in the east of the country attempted to sell six containers of uranium which dated back to the days of Belgian colonial rule.

The agreement highlights Washington's commitment to helping DR Congo effectively deal with proliferation of nuclear materials, the US embassy said in a statement. The United States has signed similar deals with Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, the statement said.

The uranium discovered by UN experts came from the country's only uranium mine in Shinkolobwe, Katanga province, which closed in 1960. Uranium from Shinkolobwe was sold to the United States by Belgium in 1943 and used in the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

DR Congo and French nuclear giant Areva agreed a deal to develop uranium mining in March last year.

And we (US State Department) are developing an innovative program that addresses the particular needs of women. For example, we are in the early stages of developing an idea we are calling Mobile Justice to help women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where sexual violence against women occurs at a horrific rate. In many parts of that country the police and court systems have disintegrated, so women who are attacked have no way to get justice. They can’t even realistically travel to the urban centers where courts have been reestablished. But these cell phones give women the ability to collect evidence and record and transmit their testimony, so women in rural areas may be able to bring justice to them.

12/10/2010

At a recent Toastmaster meeting, my speech project was to bring history to life. It was a speech out of the Storytelling Manual.

The original speech was ok at best. After the meeting, I decided to rework the speech and record it. Not because it was better but because I thought you may want to know about my first trip to the Congo in August 1998. During that trip, I witnessed history taking place. And it changed my life.

11/26/2010

The lack of improved drinking water and adequate sanitation continue to cause high childhood (under 5-years old) mortality. One out of five children die before reaching their fifth birthday. Ironically, the rate may be more since, two out of three children (under 5-years old) were not registered.

Among the worrying tendencies are the degradation of birth registration and the stagnation in the use of improved drinking water sources and improved sanitation facilities.

Still today, only one in seven people in DR Congo lives in acceptable hygienic conditions and less than half of the population has access to safe drinking water.

Two out of three children under five do not have a birth certificate, a situation that has worsened over the past decade. Indeed, while 34 percent of the country’s children under five were registered in 2000, this figure dropped to 28 per cent in 2010.

An explosive outbreak of polio is taking place in the Congo Republic, with 201 cases of paralysis found in two weeks and 104 deaths, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The government in Brazzaville, the nation’s capital, has declared an emergency and announced plans to vaccinate the entire population with oral drops three times with help from the W.H.O., Unicef and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Pointe Noire, the port city where most of the cases are concentrated, “We’ve got two hospitalswith hundreds of paralyzed people and many dead,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, the W.H.O.’s director of global polio eradication, said in an interview from Geneva. “And a couple of things about this outbreak are different and deeply disturbing.”

Polio normally strikes young boys and girls equally, killing no more than 20 percent of those it paralyzes; death ensues when paralysis moves up the spine to the nerves that control the breathing muscles. In Pointe Noire, 85 percent of the cases are in teenagers and adults, most victims are male, and the death rate is much higher.